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IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager for SQL Server vs SCOM comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Jan 23, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manage...
Ranking in Event Monitoring
15th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.4
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
Database Development and Management (13th)
SCOM
Ranking in Event Monitoring
3rd
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
83
Ranking in other categories
Network Monitoring Software (14th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2026, in the Event Monitoring category, the mindshare of IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager for SQL Server is 3.4%, up from 1.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SCOM is 9.9%, up from 7.8% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Event Monitoring Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SCOM9.9%
IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager for SQL Server3.4%
Other86.7%
Event Monitoring
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2317098 - PeerSpot reviewer
Assistant at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Offers effective monitoring of resources but lacks the ability to connect to an AWS instance and write custom queries.
We use it mainly for monitoring, including CPU, memory, and disk space, and for troubleshooting purposes We've set up alerts to notify us when performance deviates from the baseline we've configured for each resource. So, whenever that happens, we get an alert and can investigate immediately. So,…
AK
Assistant Manager at SMS group GmbH
Have integrated effective monitoring and seamless alerting with improved visualization capabilities
The most valuable feature of SCOM is its monitoring capability, and we have integrated SCOM with Grafana, which is a dashboarding tool. We have implemented and integrated this to create dashboarding of the SCOM monitoring system for the database, SQL, and the Linux servers we have configured in SCOM. We have created separate dashboarding for it, and the monitoring and creating rules and monitors in the management servers and management packs that SCOM provides are very useful for us. The alerting mechanism of SCOM has benefited our operations because we have modified the thresholds as per our internal requirements. We have configured threshold modifications for the CPU, memory, and especially for disk space. For routine disk space usage on the system, we have provided a separate threshold configuration.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The most valuable features are disk space projections for planning, and also the Snapshotting ability, to look back in time, to see what was going on the server at a particular time. It's basically the output of an sp_who2."
"Baselining our SQL Servers has made a huge impact."
"SQL monitoring time has been dramatically reduced and our IT Infrastructure team has improved SQL maintenance and monitoring knowledge over time just by using SQL DM."
"The best part of SQL DM is the ability to customize alerts and counters. This allows our team to find an issue then alert on the issue at a granular level."
"SQL DM made troubleshooting much easier and allowed multiple people to look into an issue with confidence."
"There are several monitoring tools, but IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager is actually better than other competitors."
"Monitors and alerts on our mission critical instances in real-time on a 24/7 basis."
"One of the things that it is used for is to detect anything that could possibly cause our systems not to function well, and it has helped us to determine that before anything has actually happened."
"The most valuable feature is the monitoring of Windows and Linux servers."
"Because it's Windows-based, it actually reports quite well. It reports everything you can think of on the Windows server and allows you to monitor anything. It's excellent for those in the Windows world as it's very good at it."
"SCOM should be a good choice for fresh IT environments based on Windows servers or switching from open-source monitoring tools."
"It would have to be the ability to monitor services, devices, and operations for many devices from a single console leveraging a wide variety of Management Packs available."
"It integrates with your Windows environment seamlessly and provides a lot of visibility on your Windows environment."
"It can send messages to our ticketing system."
"SCOM is a great monitoring tool."
"We are able to do problem determination on runaway processes."
 

Cons

"Scalability is what I mentioned earlier, regarding room for improvement. It doesn't seem to scale out to an environment as large as ours, with just a single monitoring server."
"The initial setup gives too many user rights to the server, so you have to put a user that is part administrator's group - that's the preferred way - on each server, which is kind of a risk. You want to do least privilege and you're not doing that."
"They can improve checking the status of the CPU, memory, and IO utilization from each task."
"I don't have that functionality, which is very disappointing. That's pretty bad and frustrating because I could query it and find out so much information about what's hitting my environment and when, but instead, they want control over it and to not give me that information."
"With basic SQL training in my history, I've found at times I needed to Google SQL counters, for example, to understand what was occurring or how to configure SQL DM to be useful."
"Some more granularity in alerting."
"I would absolutely love to create customized dashboards but, unfortunately, they don't provide me the information that I need to create the report. The report I need is the detail or the transaction detail that's happening on those Snapshots. I'd like to be able to go back through time and search for things. I don't have that functionality, which is very disappointing. That's pretty bad and frustrating because I could query it and find out so much information about what's hitting my environment and when, but instead, they want control over it and to not give me that information. So it's encrypted. I can't pull it out and that is really bothersome."
"They can improve checking the status of the CPU, memory, and IO utilization from each task."
"The management of the servers could be better."
"We didn't know the solution enough, and therefore, it took a while to set everything up correctly."
"SCOM agents have a heavy footprint. Would like a lighter, more-efficient footprint."
"The configurations are difficult. The configuration and thorough day-to-day operations to get them to the level you want takes some time."
"I would like more customized reports. People should have some customization option on the dashboards for whenever they put multiple lists into it."
"SCOM's feature that notifies us when a server is down is not present in recent updates, which has weakened the product."
"Overall, support is not great but it's not bad."
"At this point, only monitoring a network device is not good enough."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We were upgraded to Premium Support without their actually asking us, when we were quoted. Then I asked for Standard Support and that they had to re-quote us that. But they don't do that by default. They upcharge you by default, which I didn't think was very nice, without even asking."
"The pricing is reasonable, it's comparable with the competitors."
"SCOM's pricing is average."
"Our licensing fees are approximately $30 per user, per month."
"SCOM is part of the System Center suite and I am satisfied with the pricing."
"We have to pay for a license and the price is fine for us."
"We have an enterprise agreement that includes this product as part of it."
"If you have a Microsoft Enterprise Agreement, then this is part of the agreement."
"Our Enterprise Agreement includes the price."
"It is more expensive than the competition."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
9%
Construction Company
8%
Healthcare Company
8%
Outsourcing Company
8%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Government
9%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Computer Software Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business3
Midsize Enterprise5
Large Enterprise4
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business16
Midsize Enterprise22
Large Enterprise54
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
What do you like most about SCOM?
The tool helps to monitor Windows servers. It offers alerts from a central location.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SCOM?
I am not aware of the exact pricing as it is managed by my supervisor. As an academic institution, we receive substantial discounts.
What needs improvement with SCOM?
We believe that the dashboarding in SCOM needs to be improved or enhanced because it is not too expressive in reporting. We can work on deploying new ways of viewing things and modifying visualizat...
 

Also Known As

IDERA SQL DM, IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager
System Center Operations Manager, SCOM 2012
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Padnos, University of Notre Dame, D4, Infeon Technologies, Chevron, LC Waikiki, Sisters of Saint Francis Health Services, Seattle Cancer Care Alliance, CVE, Colorado State University, St. Charles, Chaucer PLC, 1-800-Flowers, Ancoris, Money Management, National Opinion Research Center, California Department of Health, Plexus; Aviva, Burlington Northern Santa Fe, CBS, Comcast, Google, Merck, Regions Financial, Schneider Electric, Tata Consultancy Services, Verizon Communications, Zurich Financial Services
Dialog Telekom
Find out what your peers are saying about IDERA SQL Diagnostic Manager for SQL Server vs. SCOM and other solutions. Updated: April 2026.
894,668 professionals have used our research since 2012.